DTE: Most Areas in Ferndale Should Have Power by Tonight
The number of customers without power has dropped to about 4,100 Thursday morning from 5,000 Wednesday evening.
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Slowly but surely power is coming back on for Ferndale residents and businesses that lost their service Wednesday evening.
At the peak of the outage, nearly 5,000 DTE Energy customers in Ferndale were without power. Thursday morning, that number had been chipped away to 4,100.
"All available crews are working," DTE spokesman John Austerberry said. "They have been at this for five or six days now."
DTE expects to have most areas in Ferndale restored by the evening, Austerberry said.
As the region swelters in this week's record heat wave, the power system has been running at full capacity. "It's like leaving your car running, at top speed, days and days on end," Austerberry said. "Even the most perfect system would see problems."
The DTE Energy substation on West Nine Mile Road experienced an "equipment problem" Wednesday afternoon due to the strain on the system, Austerberry said. All of the outages in Ferndale were related to this issue, he said. He was unsure if it was a cable or a transformer problem. A substation is the point where electricity enters at an extremely high – and unusable – voltage and is stepped down, or reduced, to send out for customer use.
Along with the 4,100 customers without power in Ferndale mid-day Thursday, DTE has about 20,000-25,000 residents and businesses without service across the region, Austerberry said.
The outage comes at a time when the National Weather Service is predicting a 100-degree day and dangerous heat index as high as 111 degrees. Due to the outage and the heat, the city of Ferndale has opened the Gerry Kulick Community Center for those looking to cool off. Water, Gatorade and a lunch for $3 for 55 and up and $6 for everyone else will be served this afternoon.
The city also opened the Kulick Center on Wednesday evening as an all-night cooling center for those without power. About 20 people took advantage of the center.
The high temperatures and power outage is not only an inconvenience for customers, but DTE crews also have to work in the excessive heat.
"Crews not only have to wear long sleeves and long pants, but a heavy protection clothing when dealing with the electricity," Austerberry said. "There has to be a little bit of balance between acting quickly to restore power and staying healthy."
He equipment is routinely tested for reliability, Austerberry said. "At 80, 85 degrees, the system will hold up," he said. Adding that as it gets hotter, the system becomes more strained.
During the hottest parts of the day, DTE has fewer options to work with when restoring power because the system is still working hard. "As the weather cools, that gives us more options to get things going again," Austerberry said.
Mark Blackwell
12:49 pm on Thursday, July 21, 2011
Ours is back off again.
So much for counting on DTE Energy to get this right the first time.
AdamR
1:21 pm on Thursday, July 21, 2011
If anyone is near W. Cambourne, please post if power is on.
Terry Parris Jr.
1:22 pm on Thursday, July 21, 2011
Adam: According to the DTE outage map, it appears West Cambourne is out.
Katie Bird
1:27 pm on Thursday, July 21, 2011
Is there a timeline for how long it will take for everyone to get their power back? "Most" people "should" have power by tonight, but is there a maximum time idea? I'm not being facetious, I'm just wondering how long it will take for the whole ordeal to be over. I'm sure it's a lot harder to estimate that.
Terry Parris Jr.
1:29 pm on Thursday, July 21, 2011
Katie: If I knew, I would have reported it. That's what DTE has told me. There is a DTE briefing today at 2pm at the Kulick Center. Maybe more answers will come out of that.
Mark Blackwell
1:42 pm on Thursday, July 21, 2011
I wonder how much this has to do with all the installments DTE did this past couple weeks of all the new "smart" meters. Not that I'd expect them to tell us if that's what it was. I certainly don't just buy "it's really hot" as a reason for power to start failing. If that were the case the whole country would be in the dark.
Terry Parris Jr.
2:44 pm on Thursday, July 21, 2011
But... it's really hot.
maggs
10:15 am on Friday, July 22, 2011
Other parts of the country *are* experiencing record peaks in temps and energy use and also have outages. When the temps get really high and high amounts of energy flow across the power lines, the lines heat up, adding to the problem. Outages happen whether it's winter snow/ice or high summer heat -
AdamR
2:25 pm on Thursday, July 21, 2011
I would just like to know why the Northwest side of Ferndale is more vulnerable to outages.
Thomas Gagne
3:33 pm on Thursday, July 21, 2011
Does anyone remember when the substation on Nine Mile suffered a minor explosion, throwing glass across the street?
My oldest son and I were parked facing Block Buster when it happened. The windows all lit up, there was a boom, then another flash and another boom. Power was out for days while DTE trucked-in transformers from out-of-state.
After that I thought we may have better equipment... but I was wrong.
Mark Blackwell
3:57 pm on Thursday, July 21, 2011
How can I forget? That 2 weeks with no power was second only to the Great Blackout of 2003 when, like now, temps were in the 90s over night.
Greg Pawlica
4:01 pm on Thursday, July 21, 2011
I remember when the government had more responsibility for our power grid...when we didn't have these kinds of problems. Now that it all privatized, the corporations are hording all the profits and not reinvesting them back into the power grid...so we suffer.
Thomas Gagne
4:37 pm on Thursday, July 21, 2011
Greg, rather than "privatized" if you wrote less-protected (fewer monopolies) and mandatory "open choice" you may be more correct. Many utility monopolies were forced to "open-up" to allow consumers choice from other "providers" or to "give back" to the grid.
Like term limits, it seemed like a better idea at the time than it actually turned out to be.
Michael Voris
4:18 pm on Thursday, July 21, 2011
Is the equipment that provides power for W. Cambourne actively being worked on - at this moment?
Michael Voris
4:19 pm on Thursday, July 21, 2011
Is the equipment that services West Cambourne actively being worked on right now?
Megan Frye
4:25 pm on Thursday, July 21, 2011
So why can't people run AC for a few weeks every summer in Metro Detroit without the power failing? I'm just asking because places like Phoenix, Las Vegas and Austin - everyone has their AC on for months at a time! Is it that our grid isn't made with extreme heat in consideration? I am completely ignorant about how stuff like this works, so if anyone has any answers ,that would be awesome!
andre holiday
6:16 pm on Thursday, July 21, 2011
I find it strange they are saying power will be restored at about 10:00 at night when less electricity is being used. You really think they can't have it fixed earlier than that.
USMC6742
9:36 am on Friday, July 22, 2011
Perhaps the so called Editor of this online publication can keep his smart ass snarls to peoples questions to himself. The citizens of Ferndale are outraged at this latest power outage that DTE should have had under control a lot faster then it is doing now and your smart ass remarks don't make it any easier. It's a public forum and if you don't like what citizens are writing the step down and let someone else do the job!
Thomas Gagne
9:40 am on Friday, July 22, 2011
Did I miss something? Which snarl would that have been?
Terry Parris Jr.
9:44 am on Friday, July 22, 2011
USMC6742: I'm sorry, but I've only made the two comments above. Also, I'm very understand so feel free to email me at terry.parris@patch.com and let me know why you're upset.
Monique Herzig
12:17 am on Saturday, July 23, 2011
The news is reporting that the south side of Ferndale is back on - Define South. You can't get souther than me - That's Detroit.
Terry Parris Jr.
12:19 am on Saturday, July 23, 2011
I'm not sure who is reporting that... but they must be talking about the dales and the dales are experience brownouts, not full on power restoration.
Sandy Klegman
11:22 am on Saturday, July 7, 2012
Okay, Ill leave a comment. this is 2012, my younger brother lives in phoenix az, and they have NEVER had an outage, and it hits 115 normally. what is our problem here?! Vegas, they have 10,000,000 bulbs at the casino AND air, no outage, so please DTE, dont say its the heat.. we are smarter than that. I would rather pay for a smarter system, and not be out, rather than listen to exuses of how the wiring cant handle the heat..BFS!
Ardy
11:47 am on Saturday, July 7, 2012
Those cities all have much younger infrastructures than ours. I don't recall seeing power lines when I was out that way many years ago. Don't they bury their lines out there?